Portescap History
From 1931 Swiss precision engineering to today's motion control company
Founder: Fritz Marti
Founder: Fritz Marti (1892–1983)
Born on a farm in Lyss, Switzerland, Fritz Marti studied at ETH Zurich, where he once worked as an assistant to Albert Einstein. At just 23 he became head of the technical school in La Chaux-de-Fonds, and in 1919, working at the watchmaker Election alongside Georges Braunschweig, he saw firsthand how vulnerable wristwatches were to shock. He devised a shock-protection mechanism using a conical jewel and a movable cap, commercialized in 1934 under the name ‘Incabloc’ (meaning ‘unbreakable’). Over his lifetime he filed roughly 130 patents, considered Incabloc his greatest achievement until his retirement in 1967, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Neuchâtel.
Timeline · From Watch Components to Motion Control
Shock-Protection Research Begins
While at Election, Fritz Marti began researching a device to protect wristwatches from shock — the starting point for a shock-absorbing mechanism built around a movable balance jewel.
Company Founded
Georges Braunschweig and Fritz Marti combined capital and technology to found ‘Le Porte-Echappement Universel SA’ (renamed Portescap in 1963) in La Chaux-de-Fonds — the company that is Portescap's root today.
The Lyre-Spring Design Is Finalized
Two additional Swiss patents (No. 198459, 220258) completed the final design, combining a double-cone structure with a lyre-shaped (harp-shaped) spring — a design that became the industry standard for decades to follow.
Production Passes 5 Million Units
Cumulative Incabloc production passed 5 million units. Headcount grew from 200 to over 700 by 1957, and by the 1950s roughly three out of every four Swiss watches used Incabloc, cementing it as a standard technology.
Renamed ‘Portescap’
With 1,200–1,300 employees (roughly 1,000 in production), the company grew into La Chaux-de-Fonds's largest employer. It registered the ‘Portescap’ brand name in 1962, reflected it in the corporate name in 1963, and made it the official company name on April 1, 1969.
Expansion into Electric Motors
Amid the Quartz Crisis that upended the entire Swiss mechanical-watch industry, Portescap extended its precision-mechanical expertise from watch components into electric motors and linear actuators — reinventing itself as a supplier of miniature stepper motors for quartz movements, and turning a crisis into a new business opportunity.
The Watch-Components Business Becomes Independent
Eric Zutter acquired the Incabloc division and established it as the separate company Incabloc SA. This fully separated Portescap's watch-components business, completing its transition into a dedicated motor and motion-control company.
1997 Onward · Becoming a Global Motion Control Company
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1997 | Acquired by U.S.-based API Motion (American Precision Industries), re-launching as a dedicated precision motion-control company. |
| 2000 | API Motion was acquired by Danaher Corporation, which brought its continuous-improvement management approach. |
| 2016 | Danaher spun off Fortive Corporation, and Portescap became part of Fortive's Automation & Specialty group. |
| 2018 | Merged into Altra Industrial Motion, adopting the Altra Business System and modernizing manufacturing facilities. |
| 2023 | Regal Rexnord acquired Altra Industrial Motion, and Portescap today operates as a brand of the global industrial automation group Regal Rexnord. |
Portescap Today
The precision-mechanical DNA that began with a single wristwatch component in 1931 now, more than 90 years later, carries through into miniature precision motion-control solutions supplied across aerospace, medical, robotics, and industrial automation. The broad motor technology portfolio — spanning brushless DC, brush DC, can-stack and disc-magnet stepper, and linear actuators — is a direct inheritance of the micron-tolerance watch-component manufacturing know-how the company built over decades.
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